Message to English speakers

The internationalization (i18n) of a project like Opquast is a very complicated matter. To begin with the project was entirely in French, done by French speakers, for French speakers. We worked for almost one year with a large francophone community to draft and select the 153 best practices of the first version (which was published on September, the 27th 2004).

Following this we launched the My-Opquast tool which currently has approximately 7000 users who are mainly French speakers. During 2005, the need for internationalization, especially in English, became more and more obvious. We decided to recruit Ian Smallwood who is fluent in both French and English to lead this project.

The Internationalization and localization into English of the project was carried out at the same time as the implementation of new features and structural changes. We’re publishing this new version today after a huge amount of work has been accomplished.

Till now, unfortunately, it has been impossible to ensure that the English translation is adequate for different profiles of English speakers. The Temesis team is far too small to easily manage the plethora or cultural particularities that exist.

So, if you feel that some words or sentences are a bit strange, we apologize, please consider this version of Opquast as a first step. Our main priority is to make interaction possible. We wanted you to be able to work with the My-Opquast tool, and to make use of the content.

From today till the end of the projet, English speakers are welcome, and will be associated with the future of the Opquast project. So welcome aboard.

Elie Sloïm (project leader) and Ian Smallwood (i18n manager)

2 commentaire(s)

Par Neil, le 30 novembre 2006 à 9 h 10 min :

Well done Ian – the result is quite impressive!

I’ve introduced the site to a few English speaking people and hopefully there’ll be some testers among them. I haven’t seen any errors yet but I’ll let you know if I do. And I’ll also let you know about feedback I’m getting directly about Opquast.

Visitors to this site: tell Opquast what you think about the site and their best practices. They are not biblical commandments set in stone, they were developed by people like you as points that should be looked at when assessing the quality of a web site.

Well Opquast was almost developed by "people like you". The only difference is that they were French-speaking people (that’s why Best Practice 198 is "Was the site cooked with Garlic" – only joking). I think that you will be quite suprised by how relevant this site is for web professionnals in non-French speaking countries.

Quality control, accessibility are becoming important for many branches of web development and not least, governement sites or governement funded sites. This is a new means of assessing quality and a pretty cool tool to boot.

One last note : Your site is not expected to score 100% so don’t be upset if you find a "best practice" that your best site does not respect. But you should perhaps leave a note if you disagree with a best pracice and help Opquast adapt to a common consensus.

– Neil

Par Ian Smallwood, le 1 décembre 2006 à 8 h 45 min :

Thankyou for your comments Neil.

2006 will be a good year and Chateau Opquast will improve with time and should be ideal for a variety for palates and tastes. What’s more the new version of My-Opquast makes it possible for the users to define their own lists of criteria, so you don’t have to go with the garlic best practice and the cheese recommendation if you don’t want to.

As you pointed out the aim of the Opquast best practices is to be relevant to web professionals everywhere regardless of language. Feedback on the best practices will surely be the basis for improving the open quality standards and feedback will also enable us to improve the service provided by the My-Opquast tool, and make implementing those best practices all the more efficient.

The feedback that we’re already getting is very positive and constructive. Thanks again to those who have already mailed us. We’re very much looking forward to hearing from the rest of you.